This Blog…

Multicultural Kuala Lumpur

In a few hours, I will be travelling up to Kuala Lumpur for a milestone class reunion with my engineering buddies. We’ve come a long way since graduation, but those stories can wait. When I started this blog, I knew that it requires lots of hard work to post valuable contents so that I can keep my readers satisfied and gain new perspectives. Whilst focussing on sharing my insights and experiences across cultural boundaries (for I have lived and worked in 10 cities over 9 countries), I am only human and do sometimes digress! Like now.

Deviate With A Cause…

What cause deviated me? Well, sharing this story is worth my loss of a couple of hours of sleep. My Canadian friend Debbie commented on her Facebook that ‘Big Pharma is suing the taxpayers for loss of profit.’ Going into the details, it is ludicrous that a very large American pharmaceutical company has filed a lawsuit to get back US$500 million from the Canadian taxpayers.

Money No Enough?

NAFTA Logo

Yes, certain large corporations are allowing greed to shadow its conscience and common sense. Drug companies, the pharma giants, are included and think that ‘Money No Enough‘, to use the name of a local Singaporean movie satirising about money, or rather the lack of the stuff. Or is the action akin to the 1960s protest song Blowing In The Wind? The crux of the matter is this: “Under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), a company can sue another NAFTA country if that nation’s laws affect its expected future profit. In this case, Eli Lilly is “losing profit” because Canadian regulators dared to act within Canadian laws and rightly denied patents on two of Eli Lilly’s expensive drugs.” I say we support the Canadians. What say you? Feel free to leave your comments.